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 COMMUNITY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

For more than fifty years the idea of community has been at the heart of the PA. From the experiment at Kingsley Hall to its current therapeutic households, the PA’s work has always involved a shared attempt to deal with the hardship of emotional distress through the practice of living together. 

When the PA was set up, its counter-culture mission was to find an alternative to psychiatric treatment. All these years later the world has changed beyond recognition. Long-stay psychiatric hospitals have mostly been closed down but they haven’t been replaced by a more enlightened and communal approach to suffering, as R. D. Laing and other PA founders hoped they would be. Instead cost-cutting quick fixes and a punishing work ethic are the order of the day. Community as a therapeutic ideal remains as elusive as ever in today’s fragmented, competitive and increasingly digital world. Yet the need for it is more and more urgent.

 

But it isn’t as easy as saying that community is good and marginalisation is bad. It is possible to feel at home in prison and in prison at home. Bands of outsiders may be much more tolerant, cohesive and healing than clubs or churches. The shared experience of adversity often creates a powerful solidarity, while shared privilege can be divisive and alienating. Thus thinking about community must also involve thinking about how one group impacts, threatens, ignores, deprives another. Community presupposes conflict.


This course serves as both as a stand alone certificate course and an introduction to the PA (including the PA communities)

Held at the PA premises in Hampstead, north London, the course takes place over six weekends spread out over the academic year. You will encounter various modes of group work to explore group dynamics / what goes on between us.  Seminars will frame topics to discuss but the heart of the course is experiential, comparative learning about group formats and dynamics – and their relationship to the politics of the wider society. It will be possible to apply to the one year Diploma in Community and Psychotherapy and the Psychotherapy Training from the Experiential Course.

APPLICATION AND FEES

 

Application is by interview. 

The course costs £840 plus a £50 interview fee. There are a limited number of bursaries available for students surviving on low income. Interviews from April 2022, click here too apply.

 

 

2022/23 COURSE PROGRAMME

PROGRAMME

Course Coordinators: 

Andrea Heath & Lucy King

Experiential Group Facilitator:

Luke Reynolds

Consciousness-raising Group Facilitator:

Paul Atkinson

Administration:

Sophia Raja

WEEKEND 1

 

Saturday 15 October 2022

10—10.30 Arrivals

10.30—11 Introduction to the Course

Andrea Heath & Lucy King

11—12.30 Seminar:

The Organisation As a Source of Individual Purpose

Dan Sofer

12—1.30 Lunch

 

1.30—3 The Philadelphia Association (PA)

Philosophy, Community, Psychotherapy 

Past & Present

Lucy King & Ian McMillan

3—3.30 Break

3.30—5 Experiential group

Luke Reynolds

Sunday 16 October

10.30—11 Arrivals

 

11—12.30 Seminar;

On Community

Jake Osborne 

12.30—1.30 Lunch

1.30—3.00 

Consciousness-raising Group 

Paul Atkinson

 

3—3.30 Break

3.30—5 Experiential Group

Luke Reynolds

WEEKEND 2

 

Saturday 26 November 2022

10—11 Arrivals & Large Group

Andrea Heath & Lucy King

11.00 —12.30 

Working Relationally

Andy Metcalf

 

12.30 —1.30 Lunch

1.30—3 

Avoiding Intimacy 

Nick Duffell

3—3.30 Break

3.30—5 Experiential group

Sunday 27 November

10.30—11 Arrivals

11—12.30 

On Phenomenology 

Emma Stroker

 

12.30—1.30 Lunch

1.30—3.00 Consciousness-raising Group

Paul Atkinson

3—3.30 Break

3.30—5 Experiential Group

Luke Reynolds

WEEKEND 3

 

Saturday 14 January 2023

10 - 11.00  Arrivals & Large Group Meeting

Lucy King & Andrea Heath

11.00 - 12.30 

Seminar: Homelessness and Psychosis 

Andreas Constandinos 

12.30 - 1.30 Lunch

 

1.30—3 

The Psyche as an Energetic Field 

Nick Duffell

3—3.30 Break

3.30—5 Experiential Group

Luke Reynolds

 

Sunday 15 January 2023

10.30—11 Arrivals

11—12.30 Womens Narratives

Christina Moutsou

 

12.30—1.30 Lunch

1.30—3.00 Consciousness-raising Group

Paul Atkinson

3—3.30 Break

3.30—5 Experiential Group

Luke Reynolds

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R. D. Laing

WEEKEND 4

 

Saturday 11 March 2023

10 - 11.00 Arrivals & Large Group

Andrea Heath & Lucy King

11.00 —12.30 

The Scapegoat

Del Loewenthal

12.30—1.30 Lunch

1.30—3 

Antipsychiatry Discussion Group 1: Family Madhouses

Rob White 

 

3—3.30 Break

3.30—5 Experiential group

Luke Reynolds

Sunday 12 March

10.30—11 Arrivals

11—12.30 Seminar 

The Power of Relations

Alia Butt

 

12.30—1.30 Lunch

1.30—3.00 Consciousness-raising Group 

Paul Atkinson

3—3.30 Break

3.30—5 Experiential Group

WEEKEND 5

 

Saturday 22 April

10—11 Arrivals & Large Group

Andrea Heath & Lucy King

11-12.30 Seminar: 

The World Comes First: Philosophy and

the Social

Paul Gurney

 

12.30 — 1.30 Lunch

1.30—3 

Antipsychiatry Discussion Group

Vincenzo Passante

3—3.30 Break

3.30—5 Experiential Group

Luke Reynolds

Sunday 23 April

10.30—11 Arrivals

11—12.30

What Happens In the Room

James Mann 

 

12.30—1.30 Lunch

1.30—3.00 Consciousness-raising Group 

Paul Atkinson

3—3.30 Break

3.30—5 Experiential Group

WEEKEND 6

 

Saturday 10 June

10—11 Arrivals & Large Group

Andrea Heath & Lucy King

11—12.30 Seminar:

Friendship, Beauty and Justice:

On Being Fair​

Robbie Lockwood

12.30—1 .30 Lunch

1.30—3

Antipsychiatry Discussion Group 3:

Vincenzo Passante

3—3.30 Break

3.30—5 Experiential group

Sunday 11 June

10.30—11 Arrivals

11—12.30 Endings and Course Reflection 

Andrea Heath & Lucy King

12.30—1.30 Lunch

1.30—3.00 Consciousness-raising Group 

Paul Atkinson

3—3.30 Break

3.30—5 Experiential Group

Luke Reynolds

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